Carnegie Medal Nomination!

Yep, you read that right. ACID has been nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2014. To say I'm in shock is an understatement.

I can't tell you what this means to me. Even if I get no further than this stage (which I probably won't, because have you seen how many amazing books are on that list?!), just knowing that people thought ACID was worth nominating is amazing.

And what makes it even better is that two agent-mates, Kerry Drewery and Chris Wooding, AND three fellow Lucky 13s - CJ Flood, Emily Murdoch and Stephanie Kuehn, have been nominated as well.

So I want to say a great big THANK YOU to everyone who's supported ACID so far, and an even bigger CONGRATULATIONS to everyone else on the #CKG14 list. I am so honoured to be in your company!

I'm going to go back to pinching myself now…

A Very Special Saturday

About half an hour ago, I was just sitting down to eat lunch when there was a knock on the front door. I looked at hubby. Hubby looked at me. With a sigh, I got up to go and answer it, preparing a polite but firm 'no' to whoever it was trying to sell us a better deal for our gas and electric, or telling us why we should donate to XYZ charity, or… you get the idea.

But when I opened the door, it was the postman. He handed me an envelope with this written on the front:

And inside…?

(Apologies for blurriness - photo was taken with my phone!)

I decided I wanted to be a published author when I was 13. If you'd told my 13-year-old self, already starry-eyed with dreams of success as she scribbled her first novel, that it was going to take almost *cough*twenty*cough* years to achieve that dream, she'd probably have been horrified.

Luckily, she had no idea it was going to take that long, which is why she kept going, writing story after story, wondering if the next book was going to be The One, or the next…

And now, I'm sitting here holding my very first finished copy of my very first published novel, which is coming out from Random House in three weeks and five days.

So if you're a writer, spending every spare minute of your time dreaming up characters and plots; if your stories keep you awake at night; if you're wondering you'll ever get that 'yes' from an agent or publisher…

Keep going.

Because if I can do it, so can you.